


What Comes After

by andabatae



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst and deep conversation, Daenerys gets a better ending, Deep thoughts with Kinvara, Dracarys to the patriarchy, Fix-It, Honestly though I really don't believe Daenerys would ever burn a bunch of innocent people wtf, I needed to make it better, Okay but maybe she's gonna go hang with Daario for a bit, Other, Post-Canon, Post-Season 8 Game of Thrones, Resurrection, She died but got better, Targaryen baggage, There is no ship because the dudes of Westeros suck, post-series finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-14 14:44:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18950233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andabatae/pseuds/andabatae
Summary: Drogon carries his mother to Essos... and a Red Priestess who raises the dead.Aka I fixed it.





	What Comes After

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to write an alternate ending for one of my favorite Game of Thrones characters, because Daenerys Targaryen deserved better. So here it is: a new start for the Mother of Dragons.
> 
> If you're here from the Star Wars fandom... *this is not the smut you're looking for*

Across the Narrow Sea, Westeros reels from a series of improbable and devastating events. The North has been decimated by the army of the dead, and King’s Landing is a smoldering heap of ruins. In a few weeks, the remaining lords and ladies of the noble houses will meet and officially declare that they prefer a king to a queen, after all, and that the best choice for the position is a boy with ancient eyes who has done nothing to earn it.

But here, on this rocky outcropping in the midst of the Dothraki Sea, everything is peaceful. It’s a peace born of sorrow but also potential, and for a moment even the wind stills in anticipation as a great black dragon lays his burden down. Then the grasslands shiver with an exhalation, the wind resumes its reckless race across the continent, and the dragon curls up around his mother like a mountain defending a pebble.

A woman draped in red steps forward. She is pale, with waving dark hair and eyes like chips of sea glass. She kneels beside the corpse of a young woman, looking up at the dragon for permission before pressing her hand to the stab wound in the woman’s chest.

“Zyhys oñoso jehikagon Aeksiot epi,” she murmurs, “se gis hen syndrorro jemagon.”

The dragon nudges his mother’s side, hot exhalations stirring her white-blonde hair.

“Zyhys perzys stepagon Aeksio Oño jorepi, se morghultas lys qelitsos sikagon.”

The wind tugs at the Red Priestess’s scarlet gown. A faint trembling starts deep in the earth.

“Hen syndrorro, oños. Hen ñuqir, perzys. Hen morghot, glaeson.”

The dead woman’s eyes open.

#

Daenerys Targaryen sucks in a desperate breath and sits upright, hands scrabbling at the hole that has been punched in her torso. Jon kissed her, and then…

Pain. Iron. Death.

“Be at ease, my queen.”

Daenerys turns wide eyes on the woman by her side—a Red Priestess, by the looks of her, with a sly slice of a smile and unsettling eyes. More important than the woman, though, is what rises behind her—Drogon’s vast, scaled flank.

A puff of warm air brushes her skin, and Daenerys turns her head to see the snout of her beloved child. She lifts a hand, resting it against his scales, and she knows then that for all the betrayals she’s experienced and everything she’s lost, there is still one being left in the world who will never leave her.

“Who are you?” Daenerys looks at the Red Priestess again, mustering up a decent tone of command despite being—she’s fairly sure—recently deceased.

“Kinvara, High Priestess of the Red Temple of Volantis,” the priestess says, and Daenerys recognizes the name. “My priests and priestesses have been spreading word of your accomplishments throughout Essos.”

Daenerys inclines her head. “My—the people speak highly of you.” She had been about to say _my advisors_ , but there aren’t any of those left, are there? “Thank you for your service.”

“It has been my honor,” Kinvara replies. “And it is my honor to serve still.”

Daenerys needs a moment to collect herself, so she strokes Drogon and studies her surroundings. Her heart lurches as she recognizes this place, with its tumbled boulders and patchy scrub leading down into the sea of grass. Drogon brought her back to the site of his birth.

It is the place of Daenerys’s birth, too, in a way. At Khal Drogo’s funeral pyre, she lost her first love and found three greater ones. She conquered the fire that night; she conquered death itself. It was a thrilling victory for the girl who had been used as a bargaining token for most of her life, and oh, that night had led to such great and terrible things...

“Tell me, Kinvara,” Daenerys says, already knowing the answer but needing to hear it. “Was I sleeping, just now?”

The Red Priestess slowly shakes her head. “You were dead, my queen.”

Daenerys’s throat grows tight at the memory of Jon Snow plunging his dagger into her chest while snow swirled around them. She swallows hard and nods, refusing to give in to the sting of tears. “You brought me back.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

Kinvara contemplates Daenerys with those icy eyes that see too much. “Because you are the one who was promised. You were born to remake the world.”

Daenerys can’t help but choke on a laugh at that, albeit one heavy with grief. She raises her eyes to the heartbreaking blue of the sky, focusing on that infinite expanse until the tears in her eyes diminish once more. “I tried,” she says. “I liberated the slaves of Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen. I sacrificed my own child and many of my soldiers and friends to defeat the army of the dead. I lost another child and more friends while liberating Westeros from the tyranny of Cersei Lannister. All it got me was a dagger to the chest from the person I trusted most.”

Kinvara nods, looking unsurprised. “The lords of Westeros are ungrateful, grasping men. Their thoughts are limited to their own fortunes, not those of others. They cannot comprehend a world beyond their petty keeps.”

Daenerys is tired of sitting in the dirt—it’s too close to kneeling, and that’s something she’ll never do again. Her chest still aches from the blow that killed her, although the pain is distant, perhaps muted by her resurrection. She moves slowly, bracing one hand against Drogon as she rises on shaking legs.

There. It is the first step of her new life, although where this path will lead, she does not know.

The Red Priestess rises with her, studying Daenerys with approval. “There’s still much left to do, my queen.”

Daenerys leans her head against Drogon, stroking his neck as she studies the landscape before her. It looks empty, but she knows firsthand that the deep grasses are filled with life—animals and people alike. Fewer Dothraki gallop in circles over the vast sea, but there are still some, living their nomadic lives, unburdened by the responsibilities of power.

“I am a queen without a kingdom,” Daenerys says with a hint of venom. “I have no army and no allies. Tell me—what am I meant to do? Conquer Westeros with nothing but my dragon and my rage?” She might be able to do it, she thinks, now that the leash holding her back has snapped. She could return to Westeros and burn it all down.

But all that would do is make Daenerys a queen of ashes, and she doesn’t want that, either. It unsettles her, what happened in King’s Landing. She was so angry, more hate than woman, and when the bells began to toll, signifying Cersei’s surrender, it suddenly wasn’t enough. She'd wanted the false queen to suffer as Daenerys had suffered. She'd needed to rip Cersei’s entire world apart.

It was the first time Daenerys had deliberately destroyed innocent people, and a terrible part of her had enjoyed it.

Kinvara doesn’t respond to Daenerys’s question, presumably realizing it isn’t meant for her. Daenerys studies the priestess, wondering how much this woman has seen in the flames. “I became my father in King’s Landing,” she says. Aerys Targaryen, the Mad King. He, too, lost control when confronted with the power the Iron Throne offered.

Kinvara doesn’t change expression. “I saw.”

“So what does that make me?” Daenerys demands. “Does that make me mad, as well?” It’s what they’ll call her in the history books, she imagines, the ones written by those grasping lords in their petty keeps: Daenerys Targaryen, the Mad Queen. The Queen Who Almost Was.

Kinvara shrugs. “All great men and women are a little mad. Do you still want to murder the innocents of Westeros?”

Daenerys considers. The idea of razing the continent to ashes for what it has taken from her is appealing, but she is no longer a servant to that hot, reckless hate. “No. The lords and generals, yes. Jon Snow, yes.”

Her lip curls at the mention of Jon—or Aegon Targaryen, rather, who for all she knows has already claimed the throne in her place. He will be a terrible king, too consumed with his own notions of honor to consider the compromises required of any leader. There is a certain moral decay inherent in the position—a willingness to cut bargains and commit violence in the name of preserving order. Lives must be weighed on a scale, and sacrifices must be made to protect the common people—although it’s impossible to save everyone, and that, too, is the burden of leadership.

Jon Snow, for all his bemoaned bastardry, is not a common person. He doesn’t think in terms of scales and necessary ugliness. He thinks only of his own nobility, instilled in him by his equally noble so-called father. Daenerys was initially charmed by that brash idealism, but now she sees it more clearly.

Daenerys isn’t a common person, either, but unlike Jon, she knows what it is to be sold and bought. She has wandered in the desert; she has been hunted and hurt. She possessed nothing and turned it into something.

Now, she possesses nothing again. It’s her own wheel, she supposes, spinning endlessly. Daenerys on top, Daenerys brought low, Daenerys ascending once more.

“Power is a difficult thing,” Kinvara says. “It makes us commit actions we could scarce imagine when we didn’t have it.” She shrugs. “But that does not mean we should not have it.”

Daenerys likes how this priestess thinks. She faces Drogon, stroking her hands over his scales and enjoying the heat radiating from him. Drogon is power personified, but only she knows the softness behind that intimidating exterior. He can burn a city to the ground, but he is gentle with her.

Like Drogon, Daenerys isn’t all one thing, either. It isn’t inscribed in stone that she has to accept the title forced on her by her bloodline and the lords of Westeros. She doesn’t have to be the Mad Queen.

“It will take a long time to return to Westeros,” she says, considering the possibility. “I’ll need a new army. New ships. And once I’m there, it will be hard to gather support after what happened in King’s Landing.”

“Why return to Westeros at all?” the Red Priestess asks.

Daenerys stares at her, hardly able to comprehend the question. “Because it’s my birthright. Because I’m the rightful queen.” _Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, the_ Khaleesi _of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains_. She accumulates titles like Dothraki warriors accumulate bells for their braids, but the most important of them has always been _Queen of the Andals and the First Men_.

“Yes, the queen of a country full of small-minded men.” The priestess speaks boldly, seemingly unintimidated by Daenerys or her dragon—a surprisingly welcome change. “Tell me—did you like being in Westeros?”

It’s a question Daenerys has never thought to ask herself. Her life has never been about _enjoyment —_only about the aspiration for more. Always, always more. The power to break her own chains. The power to break the chains of others. The power to fulfill the destiny she is _owed_ by right of blood and suffering.

“Not particularly,” she admits. Westeros is… gray. Dismal. Full of pompous men who sit on piles of gold while the common people suffer, who cheat and murder to preserve the imagined glory of their lineages, who set limitations on women because they fear their own weaknesses.

Daenerys misses the freedom of a horse between her thighs. She misses the sun against her skin and the reckless thrill of stamping her mark on a place that never intended to welcome her. She was sent to Essos for safekeeping, like a shiny bauble in a lord’s vault, but she burned her way out of her safe, pretty cage.

“You wear your name like a collar and chains, Daenerys Targaryen.” Kinvara’s stare pierces her, and there is such an accumulation of magic and wisdom in her eyes that Daenerys wonders if perhaps Kinvara is not the young woman she appears to be. If she is something else—something that has lived for a long time and seen far more terrible things than what Daenerys has done.

 _Daenerys Targaryen_ is a noble name. A distinguished one. Not the diminutive _Dany_ , designed to keep her in her place. It is not a name that hides.

And it has shaped every moment of Daenerys’s life.

She wonders, then, if what Kinvara says is true. Has her own name kept her a prisoner?

Without it, Daenerys wouldn’t have gone to the Seven Kingdoms. She wouldn’t have raised an army. She wouldn’t have gained—and promptly lost—a crown.

She wouldn’t have wanted that particular crown to begin with.

“There’s a wide world beyond Westeros,” Kinvara says, slipping the words into the profound silence left in the wake of Daenerys’s realization that her name has limited her ambitions. “Many more people who are suffering. Many people who need help. Your Dothraki, even—the women and children have few protectors left, and you know how cruel the world can be to women and children.”

And Daenerys’s ambition for a throne on a continent the Dothraki had never even seen is the reason those protectors are gone.

“There are slaves everywhere,” Kinvara continues. “Even without an army, you have a powerful voice.”

Daenerys’s heart lifts like a leaf seized by a sudden breeze. The thought of abandoning her need to rule the Seven Kingdoms is dizzying and terrifying, but it also makes her feel light in a strange and intoxicating way.

“I still want revenge,” she says, because this, too, is part of her. The Westerosi have hurt her deeper than anyone else ever has. They have taken _everything_ from her—her friends, her warriors, her reputation, her power.

“You broke the wheel,” Kinvara says, “and the Westerosi immediately scrambled to repair it. They will always prefer comfortable submission, and for all the glorious things you can offer this world, comfort is not one of them. Let them wallow in their mud and freeze in their stone towers and fight the same battles over and over again. Isn’t that revenge enough?”

Daenerys’s lips part. She can almost see it on the horizon, somewhere in the spun gold of the late afternoon clouds: a new future, too blinding to make out the details of, too foreign to compare to her prior experiences. She can craft a life that does not revolve around Westeros and the Iron Throne. She can find a new sort of power.

The Dothraki are still out there, somewhere in the grassy plains that roll away into the distance. Daario Naharis is there, too, leading the Second Sons and ensuring peace in the Bay of Dragons, and Daenerys finds herself overcome with longing to see him again. She did not love him, but she understood him, and he understood her. She misses talking to someone whose approach to loyalty and honor is inherently practical.

And there are still more wonders to be seen beyond the vast distances she has already traveled: the Summer Islands, the Shadow Lands, the islands of the Jade Sea, the sultry jungles of Sothoryos, the utter mystery of Ulthos. There are people everywhere and endless problems to solve and more chains to break, even if she no longer possesses the blunt instruments she once used to break them.

Daenerys has herself, though—and a dragon.

She smiles.

Kinvara smiles back, a subtle tilt of her lips. “Terrible things happen for a reason,” the Red Priestess says. “There is no law that decrees you only get one life... or one story.”

#

Daenerys leans against Drogon long after Kinvara departs, stroking her final child as the sun sets red and vibrant over the grasslands. Somewhere between her and that sun lies the place where all her dreams died in a bloody pool in the snow.

Daenerys knows something about dying now. She knows something about dreams, too.

The thing she knows the most about is breaking chains, so Daenerys takes a deep breath, straightens her shoulders, and jettisons the bondage of her past on a long exhale. She no longer has a string of glorious titles or an army or a single, overriding purpose. She no longer has a family to live up to and claim vengeance for.

For the first time in her life, Daenerys is simply that. A woman, born anew for the second time, ready to learn what comes after.


End file.
